Let me add, that only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
Ben Franklin, letter to the Abbés Chalut and Arnaud (April 17, 1787).
On January 22, 1920, American neoconservative pundit and author Irving Kristol was born. He died in 2009, survived by his wife, the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, and two children, one of them well known today. His most famous book is undoubtedly 1978’s Two Cheers for Capitalism: A Penetrating Assessment of Free Enterprise and the Corporate System.
This section of his speech, yesterday, is probably the best.
Because true.
While known for hyperbolic statements, extravagant figures of speech and whoppers and colorful b.s., Donald John Trump’s not exaggerating to claim a special status of having endured more than other presidents and presidential candidates. The prosecutions, the impeachments, the lies, the elaborate psychological operations carried on by mass media and Deep State operatives, and more, give weight to his claim.
Now, this doesn’t make any of his proposals and positions and other opinions correct.
But it does help us receive his next sentence: “The journey to reclaim our republic has not been an easy one, that I can tell you.” In the second half of the speech Trump framed his approach as a nationalism in the McKinley-Roosevelt tradition. Theirs is the kind of politics and republic he seeks to revive.
Also not untrue? “Those who wish to stop our cause have tried to take my freedom, and, indeed, to take my life.”
The mobbing of multiple prosecutions was piled onto by two would-be assassins. Their story, Tucker Carlson noted last week — has dropped out of the conversation.
Trump dropped it back in: “Just a few months ago, in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear — but I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”
Whatever else you may say about Trump, and whatever credence you give to his theological spin on the shots fired on July 13, 2024, his take is, if a stretch, a traditional one; many who first witnessed the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, leapt to a simple conclusion: he would become president again.
And he did.
No joke — as another, very different president liked to say.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Flux and Firefly
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
Governors will never be awed by the voice of the people, so long as it is a mere voice, without overt-acts.
Joseph Priestley, Essay on the First Principles of Government, 2nd Edition (1771), Section II, “Of Political Liberty.”
On January 21, 1950, Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury, with Whittaker Chambers being the main witness in Hiss’s prosecution. Chambers confessed to having been a Soviet spy, and accused Hiss as an accomplice, which Hiss denied to his dying day. Chambers gave a fascinating account of all this in his bestselling 1952 memoir, Witness.
Well, in style anyway, his bizarre farewell address striking ultra-familiar themes.
“Most Biden speeches are acknowledged (Lincoln, Obama) or unacknowledged (Neil Kinnock, John Kennedy) homages to other politicians,” explains Matt Taibbi. “This last Biden attempt at an Eisenhower impersonation offers an anti-insight. We’re warned about an ‘oligarchy,’ which Webster’s defines as ‘a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.’”
And here the intelligent reader is already ahead of the author.
“He tries to tag disobedient billionaires like Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen and Mark Zuckerberg (as opposed to Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates, Steven Schwartzman, etc.) as this new oligarchy, but there’s one closer to home, which Biden referenced later in the speech: ‘In the years ahead . . . it is going to be up to the president, the presidency, the congress, the courts, the free press and the American people . . . I still believe in the idea for which this nation stands. . . . Now it’s your turn to stand guard.’
“Biden’s possibly ad-libbed distinction between ‘president’ and ‘presidency’ was the most inspired line of his career,” Taibbi quips.
And eerily defining . . . of Biden’s stint at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue . . . and various vacation hot spots.*
Taibbi contrasts the man — “stumbling, tumbling” — with the machinery of the office — run by a mostly-unseen cabal Taibbi defines with reference to H. G. Wells’s science fiction novel The Invisible Man.
Other sci-fi metaphors come to mind. In his penultimate paragraph, Taibbi mentions Frankenstein filmmaker James Whale, and then in his last line Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man. But didn’t Philip K. Dick provide a hundred examples of fake personae as presidents and tyrants?
Except that the Biden Administration, whatever it might have been, was limited in its power because it lacked legitimacy from half the population — and was as cognitively challenged as Biden himself.
Yesterday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Meet the Press that our sleepy commander-in-chief had been manipulated by his staff into signing key executive orders under false pretenses. And running interference for this Democratic Party “presidency” were Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.).
Thank goodness, the Age of “The Biden” is over.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Biden spent 40 percent of his term in office “on vacation.”
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.
Ben Franklin’s recommended motto for the Great Seal of the United States, August 1776.
On January 20, 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union was founded.
The official state funeral for James Earl Carter, Jr., 39th President of the United States, was held in Washington, D.C., ten days ago. Afterwards, the body of the ex-president was transported to Plains, Georgia, for a funeral there, and internment.
What is most interesting about the Washington National Cathedral ceremony has to be the spectacle of seeing all members of that most prestigious of clubs, the Presidents’ Club gathered in one place, interacting.
Or not.
Many have noted a surprising feature: how chummy Barack Obama and Donald Trump seemed, chatting, in apparent conviviality. It is commonplace among commenters to note, as Chase Hughes put it, that “politics is theater,” and that these players are fooling us. They get along a lot better in private, or at least when not pitching for power.
But that is not quite right. The social aspect of the event showed some huge antagonisms and insecurities, especially amongst the women.
What did you see? (Not Michelle Obama, who did not attend.)
Parting question: Did Obama serve as Trump’s buffer from the other members of the Club?
All hereditary Government is in its nature tyranny. An heritable crown, or an heritable throne, or by what other fanciful name such things may be called, have no other significant explanation than that mankind are heritable property. To inherit a Government, is to inherit the people, as if they were flocks and herds.
Joseph Priestley, The Rights of Man (1791).